Daphne du Maurier's novel was a best seller, a saga of Irish families in the 1840s and onwards. I'm surprised MGM didn't buy the film rights for Greer Garson, but Britain's Two Cities nabbed it instead. It starts out promisingly, with location filming in Ireland, and instant conflict - Cecil Parker wants to mine on a land, another family don't like that, his two sons (Michael Denison and Dennis Price) are different and both love trashy Margaret Lockwood.
But then Denison dies and we're left with the less charismatic Dennis Price and the movie goes downhill. It focuses on Price whose character is never quite clear - he's jealous of his dead brother, doesn't want to be in mining, but nothing seems to drive him - then Price's character dies and the focus switches to his son, Dermot Walsh. He's a negative character too, spending a lot of time drinking and whingeing and being a wastrel and mean to his mum.
It's not easy adapting epic novels for the movies because they risk going all over the place, which is what happens here - Gone with the Wind worked because it focused on Scarlett and Rhett. This has no center. It begins with Parker, then we shift to Price, then we shift to Walsh.
There's a possible center, Margaret Lockwood's character, the woman in love with one brother who dies, then marries the other one despite not really loving him, then who comes to love him as she dies, then spoils their son and is rejected by him, then sees him die and wonders about revenge. It's a mystery why, at a time when Lockwood was the biggest female star in British movies, they didn't make it into a proper vehicle for her and made her drive the action. But they don't. I can't even get a fix on her character - she starts of as a flirty vixen type then becomes a drab housewife, then a suffering mother.
There are other problems here too: for instance, a key factor in these character's lives is a feud between two families. But we only focus on one family really, the rich one and never see much of the others, the Donovans. They throw in Donovans periodically - one to lead a mine strike, a sister to sleep with Walsh, the brother of the sister - but never spend any time on one. Why not some matriarch to clash with Lockwood?
Let's take a walk on the sunny side. It's impressive looking, with good sets and some location work. The cast is strong; the leads could admittedly have been more charismatic (Walsh, Price never could match Stewart Granger and James Mason) but everyone can act. It begins in a lively way, Lockwood's character is initially compelling, and there are some memorable sequences, such as a mine flood, a mine riot and a dancing sequence where the music speeds up and everyone spills outside (which actually has nothing to do with the main story).
But on the whole the filmmakers show far less udnderstanding of what makes an entertaining, successful melodrama than the gang over at Gainsborough.
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